


Where I Stood

by nik_knows_nothing



Category: Mission: Impossible (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Past Relationship(s), Protective Julia, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 21:03:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17352551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nik_knows_nothing/pseuds/nik_knows_nothing
Summary: "Is that--""Ethan's ex-wife.""Oh, I like her."





	Where I Stood

**Author's Note:**

> Female friendships are important, and also the IMF is veering into Ministry-of-Magic levels of carelessness with their employees, and also Ethan and Ilsa and all of them are just so heartbreaking

"So what's it like?"

Julia had been staring down the valley, at the tent--where Ethan was still unconscious, where Erik was still tending to all the new cuts and bruises and broken bones--but at the question, she jumped and looked to her left, where Ilsa Faust had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere.

"Sorry," she said, "What?"

"I mean," Ilsa waved a hand around at their general surroundings. "No, I meant--is it nice, being a doctor?"

 _Sure_ , Julia wanted to say. _Sure, it's just peachy. A real walk in the park_.

But that wasn't what the other woman was asking.

Not right this moment, not about this exact second, but like she was looking through a window and trying to imagine what life was like on the other side.

Julia knew the feeling.

"It's nice," she said, and then frowned, because it felt inadequate. "It's--it is. It's what I'm meant to be doing. It feels--right."

She didn't know how to say it.

But Ilsa nodded, so Julia thought she must have understood.

She came and stood beside her at the railing, bracing both hands against it, looking down at the valley below.

They'd been so close.

So close to total obliteration--they'd been dead, every last person in the valley, as good as dead--and then they weren't, and everything was fine.

Like it never happened.

The air was cold enough to send out little puffs of steam with each breath, but that wasn't why Julia shuddered.

"When I was little," Ilsa said suddenly. "I thought I should be a doctor. I thought it would be a good thing to do."

She glanced over and smiled wryly. "I suppose I ended up doing rather the opposite, in the end, didn't I?"

Julia felt a funny twist in her stomach, and she didn't want to examine it too closely, because it could have been pity, but it also could have been fear.

"Well, on the up side," she said. "I'm sure we both ended up with around the same knowledge of how the human body works."

Ilsa blinked, and then laughed, pleased and surprised.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, I imagine we did.”

Julia smiled back, and Ilsa glanced away again, suddenly uneasy.

“Benji told me to come find you,” she said. “By the way. In case you'd rather be alone.”

“I don't mind,” Julia said, and meant it.

Ilsa nodded, still staring hard down the valley, and then said, very quickly--

“I didn't know he was married. I only just found out. Yesterday, in fact. Sorry.”

Julia blinked.

“I mean,” she said. “I did get remarried. So. You know.”

For a second, Ilsa looked surprised.

Then she gave a puff of air that could have been another laugh and could have been relief.

“Well,” she said. “There is that.”

“Which one told you?” Julia asked. “Benji or Luther?”

“Luther.” Ilsa snuck a look at her, like she was checking to make sure it was safe, and then said, “I think I got what's colloquially known as the shovel talk.”

“Awfully brave of him, considering he didn't know I was alive until last year.”

She said it as casually as possible, so that the other woman would know it was a joke, and Ilsa definitely looked relieved this time.

“Yes, I heard about that, too,” she admitted. “I understand Benji wept for joy once he found out.”

Julia could believe it.

“It’s not his fault,” she said, matter-of-fact. “He's working through some parent issues.”

“Lord,” Ilsa said. “Aren't we all?”

Julia cracked a smile at that.

“You're MI6,” she said, because Benji had let something slip, as they were waiting for the helicopter to return. “Aren't you?”

Ilsa tensed visibly.

“I am,” she said, and then made a face. “At least, I'm fairly certain.”

“Gotcha,” Julia said, even though she clearly hadn't, and cast wildly about for a safer topic of conversation.

“Is it true that you killed three of Owen Davian’s men?” Ilsa asked, before she could think of a single one.

The question surprised her, and then she wondered if this was the spy version of small talk.

At the same moment, she realized what it meant, that Ilsa was uneasy, and she was suddenly immensely grateful.

Ilsa was a spy--and if Ethan liked her, she had to be a very good spy--and it would be easy to step sideways into a character that was at ease, act relaxed and affable and easy to talk to.

Instead, she was just a little bit awkward, a little bit nervous, and Julia couldn't help liking her, too.

“In all fairness,” she said. “Ethan softened them up a bit first.”

Three years of therapy, and she still didn't like to think about it too much.

But she could pretend.

For the space of a conversation, she could pretend.

Ilsa nodded. “He does seem to have a habit of doing that.”

Julia looked back at the tent down below.

No one had come out since they'd taken him in.

He'd looked so broken, when they'd pulled him from the helicopter, so fragile and small-looking--

"He'll be alright," Ilsa said, unconvincing, and Julia nodded.

"He will be," she said. "He always is."

She thought of the x-rays from years ago, the day they'd met, the infinity of lines and cracks that had made half his bones look like a jigsaw puzzle.

"The first time I saw his x-rays," she told Ilsa. "I thought there must be something wrong with the machine. I thought--there was no way a transportation engineer had broken that many bones rock climbing."

"Transportation engineer?" Ilsa looked delighted. "That was his cover?"

Julia shrugged, embarrassed. "In retrospect, maybe I should have figured that out sooner."

Ilsa scoffed. "In all fairness, it is rather a bold leap to go from 'your x-rays are a mess' to 'you're not who you say you are.'"

Julia laughed a little, and Ilsa looked just as surprised as she had by her own laughter.

She recognized that look at once.

Of course she did.

How many times had she seen it on Ethan?

Again, she felt that funny twist in her stomach, and Ilsa had to have noticed, but she didn't comment.

Instead, she shook her head and said, "His hands were a mess, weren't they? In the x-rays?"

They had been. Julia saw again the spiderweb of cracks that had zigzagged across the bones of his hands, the telltale boxer's fracture that looked like the bones had been broken and healed over a thousand times.

"They were," she said, and made a face at the recollection. "God, they looked so awful."

Ilsa hummed in sympathy.

Then she frowned and held up her own hand, pointing to a bone in the thumb that showed the same swelling she'd seen too many times before.

"What about this bone?" she asked. "The little one, right here? In training--for us, at least--they always teach you, if you're ever in handcuffs, there's a bone you can break--"

"Metacarpal," Julia said. "Is that what it's called?"

She must have mistaken the look on Julia's face for something else, because she said quickly, "It hardly ever comes up in the field. But they make you practice, you know? The metacarpal. Before you're ready, you have to practice."

Julia saw the x-rays again, no matter how badly she wanted not to.

After she'd found out about--all of it, after Shanghai, she'd wondered about the those damn x-rays, and they didn't make sense.

He'd been in the field almost ten years, Ethan had told her, all proud and smiling, and she'd smiled past the fears swirling around in the back of her mind, because some of the fractures were so much older than that, and she'd wondered, she'd _wondered_ \--

And now here was Ilsa, smiling just like Ethan had done, holding up her hand and asking if Ethan's was the same.

_Is it nice, being a doctor?_

_When I was little, I thought--_

_They make you practice._

_You have to practice--_

She didn't even know what the bone was called.

And Julia wasn't an idiot.

She knew the woman standing next to her could kill her in about a dozen ways without breaking a sweat, just like she knew there was no way of knowing whether this was the real Ilsa Faust she was talking to, or just a mask that the other woman had put on because she thought Julia might like it best, awkwardness and all.

And yet--

"I thought it was another mistake," she admitted, fighting to keep her voice normal. "The bone was so heavily ossified--it had almost fused to the knuckle, I thought it had to be a mistake."

Ilsa scoffed again.

"Same training program, then," she said. "I did wonder. So ridiculous."

She spoke lightly, dropping her hand and turning back to look out over the valley once more.

For a few moments, they were both silent.

Then Ilsa said "metacarpal" in a thoughtful sort of voice, and brushed her right thumb over the bones of the left.

Suddenly, and with a ferocity that nearly took her breath away, Julia hated them, hated the men and women she'd never met, the faceless men and women who took people like Ethan and Luther and Benji, and whoever Ilsa and Solomon Lane had been, once upon a time.

They took them and broke them, and turned them into children--children who could be pointed and aimed and fired, children who smiled and puffed out their chests and then shattered all the bones in their hands and came crawling back, no matter how many times they were kicked aside.

They were children, they were dolls, they were little tin soldiers, and the men and women who played with them could tell them to jump or fly or snap their bones in half over and over and over again, and they'd do it, and smile, and never even ask what the bone was called.

_Disposable._

When Ethan had left, in the end, it had been because he was disposable, and no matter how she tried to make him see, he just couldn't understand that being happy didn't mean being selfish, that he was allowed to want something more than what his handlers told him he was allowed to have.

At the time, she'd thought it was just Ethan, that that was just who he was as a person.

But now here was Ilsa, and even Benji--funny, clever, brilliant little Benji, who loved his tech like it was an extension of his mind, and who had talked her ear off for hours and hours when he'd stopped by uninvited and found her playing _Uncharted_ \--and they all looked at the real world like it was some magical fantasyland.

 _Forlorn like children,_ Julia thought. _And experienced like old men._

The rest of the quote sprang, unbidden, into her mind, no matter how hard she tried to push it away.

_I believe we are lost._

Ilsa tapped one finger against the railing and hummed a tune under her breath.

Julia didn't recognize it.

But Ilsa did, obviously, and they stood there, side by side, and Julia listened as Ilsa hummed her own private melody and kept the beat with one long, broken finger.

_Tap, tap, tap._

"Is it nice," Julia asked, and her own voice sounded faraway and cruelly sarcastic. "Being a spy?"

The tapping stopped.

Ilsa slanted a look over at her from the corner of her eyes, and, for a long second, Julia thought she wouldn't answer.

But then she smiled, the same cool, dry smile that Ethan had worn, towards the end.

"It feels right," she said. "It's what I'm meant to be."

The vowels in her words were all flattened out, short and clipped, and Julia realized that she was mimicking an American accent.

Julia's accent, to be more specific.

"I don't know," she managed. "I think maybe no one's meant for that."

And then, all at once, she had turned her back on the valley, turned fully to face Ilsa--

"Listen," she said. "Listen, I know Luther, so I know he's probably already given you the 'don't break Ethan's heart' speech."

For the first time, something almost like fear darted across the other woman's face--or maybe it was guilt.

"I won't," she promised. "I didn't know he was--that is, if you want me to back off--"

"That's not what I'm saying," Julia said quickly. "I know you won't, I'm not telling you to leave him."

The idea of Ethan by himself in one of his musty little safe houses was enough to rattle her down to the bone, and she hated the way he had tried to reach out when they had brought him in from the helicopter, stretching out blindly, looking for something--anything--to hold on to.

"I'm saying," she said, pushing the thought from her mind. "I'm saying, don't let it break you, either."

Ilsa frowned. "What do you mean?"

Julia crossed her arms tightly across her chest, stared up at the mountains around them, and tried to force her thoughts into order.

What did she mean?

"Ethan is loyal," she said finally. "To his handlers, to his superior officers--God help him, no matter what they do, he'll always take their orders, no matter what they make him--"

She broke off, and didn't want to turn around again, didn't want to look down and see if the door to the tent remained still, unmoving.

"But you," she said. "You're not like that, are you?"

She waited for Ilsa to protest, waited for her to swear up and down that she was proud to serve, for queen and country, she would always do her duty--

But instead, after a pause, Ilsa said, "No, I don't suppose I am."

"Good," Julia said fiercely. "Good. They don't deserve--I mean, they can't just--the things they make you all do. They don't deserve to be worshipped. On top of all of that."

Ilsa was silent for a few moments more, and Julia wondered how many times she had been disavowed, denounced, tossed to the side without a second thought, how many Mr. Secretaries, how many Kittredges and Walkers and Ambroses she'd known.

_How many Jim Phelpses?_

"I need to know," Julia said. "I need to know that there's someone who's loyal to him. First. Not the CIA, not the IMF. Just him. Just Ethan."

Ilsa studied her. "And what about you?"

"I'm not there," Julia said bluntly. "But even before, even when I was--I could never do the things you all do. I never could. And if there's someone who can, and someone who still chooses him first, anyway, then maybe--I think, maybe that'll be enough."

"Enough," Ilsa echoed. "Enough for what?"

Julia thought of the day it all ended, how she'd cried, how she'd begged him to put himself first, for once in his goddammed life--

Ethan had cried, too, like a child, but in the end, he had left, and she had let him.

And it was for the best.

Really, it was.

And she loved Erik, she really did, not just as a consolation prize or as the next best thing, but because he was good, and he was kind, and he had the same need as she did to _go_ , to _do_ , to make things better--

She was happy, now.

She loved her job, and she was good at it, and she was making a difference, she was changing things, she was doing what she'd always dreamed of doing, even as a child.

"Enough," she said slowly, "for him to believe he deserves it."

Ilsa's smile was only a little bit hollow. "I don't know if anyone is enough for that."

Julia sighed. "I'm not asking you to fix him. It's not anyone's job, to fix someone else like that."

Ilsa laughed a little. "Says the doctor."

"Not like that," Julia said, but she smiled, too, and it didn't hurt. "I'm not saying you have to fix him. Just. Be there. It'll be enough."

Ilsa looked like she doubted that.

And maybe she should, maybe Julia was just being hopelessly naïve.

But maybe.

Maybe it would be enough.

Someone called her name, and she turned to see Erik stepping out from the tent, searching for her.

When he saw her, he waved, and pointed back inside, and she understood.

"He's alright," Ilsa said, sounding relieved in spite of her earlier assurance.

"Ilsa," Julia said. "Promise you'll look out for him."

Ilsa tore her eyes away from the tent, and Julia felt foolish, suddenly, like she should have known--like she shouldn't have had to ask.

"Promise," Ilsa said. "I promise."

Julia nodded, headed for the stairs that would lead her back down to that simple white tent, little and innocuous against the green and brown of the valley--

"Julia?" Julia stopped at the edge of the railing and looked back to see Ilsa looking thoughtful.

"You said you could never do what we do," she said. "Ethan and Luther and Benji--and me."

Julia said nothing.

"For what it's worth," Ilsa said, quiet and honest and so much like Ethan that it made her chest hurt.

"I think you'd have made an excellent spy."

It was a compliment.

Despite it all, despite everything, Julia knew, it was the highest compliment the other woman knew how to give.

"Thank you," she said.

Her hand tightened on the railing, and there was something about Ilsa and Ethan, and Walker and Lane and all the rest of them, something tragic and pathetic and noble and beautiful, all at once.

"For what it's worth," she said, and meant it with every fiber of her being. "I think you would have made an excellent doctor."

Ilsa smiled, and so did Julia.

Then she turned, walked quickly down the stairs, and headed into the tent to say goodbye.


End file.
